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Porosity comes from contaminates! Ether the contaminates are getting into the weld from lack of shielding gas or some other contaminate (oil, rust, mill scale, paint, ect). If you rule out the "other contaminates" then it is a lack of or improper shielding gas. And as it has been stated wind could be blowing away your shielding gas.

After you have eliminated all of the root causes mentioned in this post there is still one additional cause of porosity, which is holding too long of an arc. The weld would have porosity that looked the same as porosity caused by improper shielding.

Don you may have something. How long should my arc be? I picked some new tungston today but they didn't have a #10 nozzle to replace my #7. Tomorrow I'm going to finish my slide hammer, I'll shorten my arc up some and see if it helps.

porosity problem

hi friend ,if youve covered all your other bases, my only other thought is that carbon steel(if thats what your material is) tends to do that when it is overheated,everything else in check(gas coverage etc0 ALSO ARE you keeping the gas post flo going after you stop your arc?

I forget where the post flow is set but yes I'm using it. I have the welder set at 155 amps, after the weld is started I ease up on the pedal and continue. The rods are 3/32 and 3/32 tungston, argon set on 20 cfm with a #7 cup. Like I've said I'm trying to learn this process, but sometime I get frustrated and pick up my mig or switch back to stick. It's most likely a combination of errors on my part, I have a lot to learn.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

hmm

I may have missed it but how thick is the base metal, so far everyone has touched all the other bases, all else fails id say the heck with tiggin it go od school Oxy weld it no need for shielding gas and so much easier to control the heat

justinp61

Being a newbie, do you know that any stray arc marks are a potential source for porosity. This would include if you happen to scratch start the tungsten into too long an arc, or actually sticking the tungsten to the plate and then breaking away too far, or leaving a stray arc mark after you break off. Slight marks may be harmless but if there is any sign of pitting or a crater, then that area has to be totally ground out. You shouldn't weld over a bad 'pit' and hope to burn it out. Most of the time it will develop into visable porosity and if you do happen to bury it, then you'll never know the quality of your weld. I mention this because there appears to be an example on the extreme left of your picture. The tan smokey residue suggests an excessive long arc has happened and there looks like a crater in the first metal deposit. If there were similar marks further along they could have been your problem. Then again I could be totally off base.